These are the things I say or do. While in France or some other country in the neighborhood. Enjoy.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Toys R Us Kid

It's 6:34 in the morning here, and I cannot sleep worth anything. I've been up since five. Last night I cooked dinner for my mom and her friend where they are staying at my friend's apartment. We drank four bottles of wine between the three of us, so you'd think I would have slept well. But no. So now I am looking through all of the blogs of my friends, and have come to discover that Kathleen is getting married, which is awesome. Also, her brother and his wife are having a baby.A part of me feels really, really old when I hear these things. Everyone I know is getting, like, real jobs, houses, and spouses and kids are popping out everywhere. At the same time, I feel extremely young and immature because I myself don't even have a girlfriend or crush, a job that pays much more than what one would make at McDonald's, a car (not that I'd want one...) or health insurance. I considered paying 20 euros the other day for the shoes that I desperately needed a major purchase decision (the composition of the others was beginning to lean too much towards epoxy and bike tire to render them remotely water resistant). I guess you could call my lifestyle bohemian, and make it all romantical sounding, but it's really just a function of being absolutely free and mostly poor. Walking around the Louvre the other day, or having a picnic on a windy hill overlooking Rouen, I realized that I wouldn't trade any of it for the security/comfort of a house or a car or marriage. I'm fine with living my life the way I do, and feel no pressure to change it. It's nice to be able to say, "I'm going to Prague, and I don't know what I'm going to do there for a week, but I will sure as hell enjoy it." I have no dogs or children (not that I see them as the same amount of responsibility, mind you) to pawn off on someone to take care of, no house that needs watching or plants that need watering, no significant other to placate. So, really, I haven't grown up in many senses of the word, like "Having Responsibilities". But why would you want that, anyway? Now, after having written this blathering nonsense, I'm tired. If the walk home wakes me up, a bike ride is in order. If not, I'll just crash in my bed.

I figured out recently that our lives have begun. They don't start after we "grow up" or graduate or whatever our next goal is. This is your life. And it's really really nifty. You get to meet people and see new places and all sorts of cool things. Luckily, you've already realized this. What good is financial security if you're not having fun? What good is being a grownup if it chains you down and makes you unhappy? You're actually living and know it. That's worth more than security, stability, or any other s-word grownups are supposed to want.

fontgoddess has a good point. We are told consistantly throughout our lives that we are preparing ourselves for the next big part of life. Elementary school is there to prepare us for middle school, which prepares us for high school, which prepares us for college, which prepares us for life. This is the big lie. We are constantly living, not constantly being prepared to live.

i stumbled across your blog the other day and i must say this last post is amazing. i am graduating college in a few weeks and i am fighting internal battles as to the true meaning of success. i want to travel and live now before i am chained down to life and a routine but at times i feel i need to do whats expected. anyway...congrats. it's better to live in the moment and be happy then to be miserable but stable.

I remember the old days when you did have responsibilities. Yep, you had exactly one of the them: a really cool plant. Yes, you were a good caretaker of Planty -- you watered it regularly, made sure it had plenty of sun, etc. And then you decided to go out of town, and you left Planty with me, a trusted friend. And I killed it. No, no... I didn't just kill it, I made it suffer by sticking it under a leaky faucet for 26 days while I went out of town, thinking that the steady "drip, drip, drip" of my sink would give it all the lovin' and carin' it needed. Instead, the leaking water teased and tormented Planty, probably keeping it filled with dreams of one day having the faucet turn on at full blast. Poor, poor Planty: Every drip must have been a painful reminder that it's suffering was going to be drawn out as long as possible. Truly, it would have been better to have just put Planty in the oven and cooked it at 500 degrees for twenty minutes; at least then it wouldn't have had time to reflect on its beloved past and juxtapose those sweet memories with its current long-suffering.

Hey, listen... I'm really sorry about all of that. Yeah, wow... you really loved that plant, and I really proved that I was just agreeing to take care of it to humor you.

My analysis: Your sweet sweet memories of Planty combined with your recollection of its horrible horrible death have been repressed to such an extent that you cannot help but be attracted to a lifestyle of austerity.

Or, you could just be frickin' cool and free and counter-cultural and alive.

But it's probably the repression thing. That seems to be the simplest explanation.

Ah, planty, how I miss him. I think you might be right-whenever I do those rorschach tests, I say, "Plant!" every time. Kinda like in that one Simpsons episode where Homer goes to the mental hospital and only sees Bart in all of the tests...

You know, a football player, you can get two broken hands, they just tape you up and you go play because you can work around them. polls Long John Daly's list of calamities in 2006 was more extensive than one of his colossal drives: domestic difficulties, torn hand ligaments, a broken pinkie, a sore left hip, sciatic nerve problems and plenty of missed cuts. Nothing went right all last year. According to the article: Square drivers didn't go on sale to the public until last weekend, but Mark King, the CEO of TaylorMade Adidas Golf, was predicting the demise of the design well before Nike's Sumo Saturday.

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